Closed petition Require candidates to have lived for 5 years in the area they want to be MP in.

Closed on 15 January 2017

Our MPs seem increasingly divorced from the people who elect them. This isn't helped by all parties choosing to parachute non local candidates into constituencies with which they have no links. Making it compulsory to live within the constituency for 5 years before standing would stop this practice

According to Smith Institute Data, MPs have a very different background to the electorate. 33% are privately educated and 23% went to Oxbridge. The number of professional politicians in parliament has risen from 3.7% to 25% since 1979 while the % of manual workers has fallen from 15.8 to 4. Too often the party central offices are choosing candidates from the Westminster village and sending them to stand in seats in the provinces where they are unrepresentative of the people voting for them